You are here

Government overhaul not needed in Mt. Pleasant

Based on being a native of Mt. Pleasant and long-time resident who wants the town to remain progressive and modern, I am opposed to a charter change to alter our form of government and will vote against on Dec. 3.

I’m one of the few citizens who has been in Mt. Pleasant long enough to remember that in ‘56, we had a mayor-alderman form of government, and I can tell you that history shows that under that deal we lost some very good industries because one man, the mayor, decided he didn’t want it in the town. One man cannot run the town and do the will of the people. We’ve got five councilmen who are elected by you people. They’re here at your whim. If you don’t like what they are doing, you can throw them out.

There’s no way you can know what the new charter or the new government will be like until the new people have been elected. To sit here and try to decide how the new charter is so much better or worse … we can’t do it because it’s a nonexistent thing. We don’t know what would come out of that: if you got a very aggressive mayor in there, it wouldn’t work. If you got a good mayor in there, it might work, but it won’t work as good as what we have now.

The commission we now have was elected by the voters of Mt. Pleasant. We shouldn’t vote out what we have now based on the claims of a few loose cannons spouting many false claims. They can’t give you any facts. If you don’t like the decisions of the current commissioners, vote them out.

We changed the form of government in ‘56, hiring a professional city manager, and it’s gone great since then in my opinion. The board is in full charge of running the city, they can hire the city manager and they can fire the city manager ­... we’ve seen plenty of that in recent years. If they are not doing right, the board can change it, not an election, not by changing our charter to get to it … all of that can be done right now. As far as having qualified people, that’s a matter of personal feelings. I feel we have one of the smoothest-running situations right now I’ve seen in Mt. Pleasant. We can’t change our form of government every time some angry person is dissatisfied.

The fact that citizens came to the public informational forum Nov. 9 in the numbers they did shows they are interested in Mt. Pleasant, and we, those opposed to charter change, are too. We we want to stay progressive, we want to stay global, we want to add to it, we want to move it the way the majority of citizens want it … that can be done now without any government change.

As far as the budget is concerned, the city commission has the right to disapprove every expenditure, but if it doesn’t suit everyone in town, in my opinion, put the blame where it belongs … on the city council. They run this town. They are elected by the Mt. Pleasant voters.

You can’t compare what we’ve got to the new because it doesn’t exist. All we’ve got is “throw out what we’ve got now.” We have nothing in writing. They can give you guesses, but they can’t give you facts. Anybody in town can run for mayor.

The statement was made that all the people in Mt. Pleasant want this now. No one can tell you what the majority of people in town want because no one’s gone out there and asked the majority. People have the right to vote now. We’ve heard from the commissioners they will support an elected mayor, and in June that will be done. I hate to see us rush something in ­— you do it right. You don’t do it because somebody wants it done now. The right way to do this is to add it to the referendum to be voted on by the city commission so it can be done in the next election in July.

As a career business and government professional, it is my view we cannot allow the management of Mt. Pleasant’s $10 million budget to become a political football. We have seen the fights and threats among our politicians. We can’t allow them to become a small dictator group running the city according to vendettas and whims.

Rules for posting comments

Comments posted below are from readers. In no way do they represent the view of Stephens Media LLC or this newspaper. This is a public forum.

Comments may be monitored for inappropriate content but the newspaper is under no obligation to do so. Comment posters are solely responsible under the Communications Decency Act for comments posted on this Web site. Stephens Media LLC is not liable for messages from third parties.

IP and email addresses of persons who post are not treated as confidential records and will be disclosed in response to valid legal process.

Do not post:

Potentially libelous statements or damaging innuendo.

Obscene, explicit, or racist language.

Copyrighted materials of any sort without the express permission of the copyright holder.

Personal attacks, insults or threats.

The use of another person's real name to disguise your identity.

Comments unrelated to the story.

If you believe that a commenter has not followed these guidelines, please click the FLAG icon below the comment.